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The syntax of Why-Stripping

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Abstract

This study investigates a clausal ellipsis construction involving the adverbial wh-phrase why and a non-wh-remnant, hereafter Why-Stripping. We show that Why-Stripping exhibits movement properties such as connectivity effects in the same way as Sluicing (with argument wh-phrases) and Stripping, and claim that Why-Stripping involves movement of the focused phrase (e.g. Mary) followed by clausal ellipsis. Furthermore, based on the fact that Why-Stripping does not show strict locality restrictions, unlike Sluicing with why, we claim that why in Why-Stripping is base-generated in the Spec_CP position while Sluicing with why involves adjunct wh-movement. According to this view, there are two types of why: one that moves and the other that does not move. It is shown that the latter induces focus association and participates in Why-Stripping. Thus, the investigation of Why-Stripping contributes to revealing the nature of the syntax of why itself.

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Notes

  1. See Merchant (2006) and Jones (2004) for details about the syntax of not in a stripping context.

  2. In Nevins (2008), examples like (8) are reported to be acceptable in English. Among the 10 speakers we consulted, however, only 6 speakers accepted examples like (8). In this study, we follow Nevins and assume that Sluice Stripping as in (8) is possible. All judgments on Sluice Stripping are given by the 6 speakers who accepted this construction without any problem. Ultimately, a further refinement of ellipsis structures involving a wh- and a non-wh-remnant beyond Why and Sluice Stripping might be in order. The reader may see Grebenyova (2006), Van Craenenbroeck and Lipták (2006), Ince (2007), and Ortega-Santos et al. (2014) for discussion.

  3. Note, however, that Merchant (2004:716–732) argues that being pragmatically controlled is not necessarily a hallmark for Deep Anaphora.

  4. Case Connectivity effects are not seen in English. As shown in (i), the remnants of Why-Stripping and Stripping can bear Accusative Case even though the correlates have Nominative Case. If these constructions involve clausal ellipsis, such a Case Mismatch should not be allowed.

    1. (i)
      figure r

    Still, in many environments beyond Why-Stripping and Stripping, DPs receive so-called Default Case, e.g., when a pronoun appears in a coordination structure functioning as a subject as in (ii) (see Schütze 2001 for details):

    1. (ii)
      figure s

    Thus, we conclude that the apparent lack of the Case connectivity in English is due to an independent factor, namely, the availability of Default Case in this language (see Merchant 2004: 700–704 for discussion of other alternatives compatible with the ellipsis analysis).

  5. The following example from German suggests that the ellipsis derivation is possible in the matrix Why-Stripping without a clear linguistic antecedent.

    1. (i)
      figure t

    The native speaker of German we interviewed told us that if it is clear that the secretary is praised, the accusative case should be used and the dative case is quite odd. If this judgment holds for other speakers as well, it may weaken our speculation that matrix Why-Stripping without an antecedent is derived via Deep Anaphora (see Sect. 1.2.5 for discussion) and we may eventually claim that all examples of Why-Stripping involve ellipsis.

  6. Under Sluicing, when the verb in the matrix clause is compatible with multiple prepositions, it seems that the preposition of the remnant can differ from that of the correlate as long as the interpretation of the matrix clause and the sluiced clause remains constant. For example, a verb like talk can take multiple prepositions, and the type of PP in the stripped clause can be different from the PP in the antecedent clause. However, a semantically empty preposition like of still cannot appear in the structure.

    1. (i)
      figure ad

    In this type of example, the PPs are “connected” to the matrix verb in terms of selection; that is to say, these prepositions are those that are selected by the matrix verb. Therefore, this observation is compatible with an ellipsis analysis.

    Furthermore, this type of example can be interpreted as evidence that a strict parallelism must hold between the material that falls into the scope of the ellipsis and the antecedent constituent, but the element that escaped the scope of ellipsis does not need to adhere to such a strict parallelism. See Merchant’s (2007, 2008) closely related discussion.

  7. Marcel den Dikken (p.c.) pointed out to us that the Dutch counterpart of (33) is acceptable; however, when the negation is present, it is unacceptable.

    1. (i)
      figure af

    Furthermore, the preposition is obligatory in the embedded context. This difference between embedded cases and matrix cases corresponds to the deep/surface anaphora distinction in the matrix and embedded context. Turning to the German data in (33), our informant told us that the P-omission is less acceptable, but it is not clear how bad the P-omission example is. It is possible that the matrix P-omission is better than the embedded P-omission. If this is the case, the German data also support the position that the matrix case may have deep anaphora derivation, but the embedded case is surface anaphora.

  8. There are various exceptions and counterexamples against this generalization reported in the literature, e.g., Brazilian Portuguese (Almeida and Yoshida 2007) and Serbo-Croatian (Stjepanovic 2008), among others. It has been claimed that P-drop under clausal ellipsis constructions is associated with an underlying cleft, which means that the syntactic form of the ellipsis site is different from the antecedent clause (e.g., Rodrigues et. al. 2009, a.o.). If true, the apparent counterexamples to the P-stranding generalization would be explained away. See Merchant (2001), van Craenenbroeck (2010a) and Martín González (2010) for relevant discussions. Be that as it may, we would like to note that the same exception seems to hold true for the P-omission in Why-Stripping. An example from Brazilian Portuguese in (i) shows that P-omission in Why-Stripping is acceptable. Thus, such examples further support the parallelism between Sluicing and Why-Stripping.

    1. (i)
      figure al

    A native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese that we consulted pointed out that P-less Why-Stripping with a name (e.g., a Maria) is slightly less acceptable than a pronoun (e.g., ela), but the acceptability of both cases does not differ compared to an example with a preposition.

  9. See, however, Wilder (1997) for an argument that non-constituents can be target of ellipsis.

  10. Using every as the antecedent for the pronoun (e.g. (48)) could run into the problem of E-type reading, and it could obscure the long-distance interpretation. This potential problem does not arise with the quantifier no in (49). The judgment is somewhat delicate but the native speakers who we interviewed confirmed that the bound variable reading in these examples is possible (10 out of 10 speakers).

    Another possible test for the long-distance reading is to employ the each the other dependency, where the other is licensed only if there is each as shown in the contrast between (ia) and (ib, ic). ((ia) is from Lasnik 2005a:264, while (ib) and (ic) are modified from Lasnik 2005a, 2005b; see also Fiengo and Lasnik 1973.)

    1. (i)
      figure ay

    Making use of the each the other dependency, we can come up with the following example.

    1. (ii)
      figure az

    For both (i) and (ii), judgments are somewhat delicate. (6 out of 10 speakers provided the judgments reported above while 4 speakers did not have any clear judgments, even for simpler cases like (i).) However, as long as examples in (ii) are as acceptable as in (i), we can conclude that long-distance Why-Stripping is possible.

  11. Collins (1991) also claims that how come, unlike why, does not allow tenseless clauses.

    1. (i)
      figure bg

    Under our analysis where tenseless clauses with why are instances of Why-Stripping, this fact is unexpected because how come licenses How come-Stripping; (i) could well be derived as How come-Stripping with a VP remnant.

    However, some speakers (3 out of 10 native speakers who accept How come-Stripping in the first place; see footnote 2) accept tenseless clauses with how come in some contexts. For example, they accept both examples in (ii):

    1. (ii)
      figure bh

    An informal Google search gives more than 300 hits of the instance of “how come VP”. (We counted the number of “how come VP” examples out of simple search of the string “how come”.) Specifically, tenseless clauses using keep as a verb (e.g., How come keep drinking it?) seem to be used productively. Although the issue of why tenseless clauses with how come are less productive than those with why remains as an open question, the data is not incompatible with our analysis.

  12. These tenseless-clause remnants in Why-Stripping often occur without a linguistic antecedent. For discussion of Why-Stripping without a linguistic antecedent, see Sect. 1.2.

  13. There is no agreement in the previous literature as to whether long-distance Stripping is possible in English. Lobeck (1995:27), for example, claims that it is ungrammatical in contrast to Depiante (2000). We consulted with 10 native speakers and they all accepted examples of long-distance Stripping like (62b). Therefore, we assume that long-distance Stripping is generally possible.

  14. We consulted 10 native speakers of English, and all of them found these examples acceptable.

  15. However, it does not seem to be the case that Stripping is sensitive to any type of island. Left-Branch island violations (Kennedy and Merchant 2000; Merchant 2001; Ross 1967, 1969, among many others) are not observed under Stripping, as shown in (ia). In this respect, Stripping patterns with Sluicing and Why-Stripping, (ib) and (ic), respectively.

    1. (i)
      figure bu

    Similarly, comp-trace effects (Chomsky 1986; Lasnik and Saito 1992; Merchant 2001; Perlmutter 1971, among many others) are not seen in Stripping (iia), Sluicing (iib), or Why-Stripping (iic).

    1. (ii)
      figure bv

    These observations may point to the generalization that Stripping can violate the so-called PF-islands (such as Left Branch Condition (LBC) and that-trace effects), but it is constrained by propositional islands (such as Complex NPs and Adjunct islands) in Merchant’s (2001) classification. Sluicing and Why-Stripping, on the other hand, are not constrained by any type of island. We have a speculative explanation for the island-sensitivity of Stripping to (propositional) islands in Sect. 3.3. At this point, we do not have an account of why PF-islands are not observed even under Stripping. Still, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, the LBC facts are explained under Kennedy and Merchant’s (2000) analysis of LBC. They claim that LBC is violated when a language lacks the appropriate spell-out for the D-head with a specific feature (e.g. [+wh]), causing a PF violation. Thus, if the relevant head is elided under any types of ellipsis, including Stripping, the lack of LBC can be expected.

  16. See Nakao and Yoshida (2007) for an account of why there is no island-repair effect with Why-Sluicing.

  17. Closely related approaches in terms of rightward movement exist for Gapping (see Jayaseelan 1990; see also Yoshida et al. 2012) and for Multiple Sluicing (Lasnik 2014). See Ortega-Santos et al. (2014) for further discussion of the asymmetries between Why and Sluice Stripping.

  18. Furthermore, natto in (76) is contrasted to the other ‘given’ components of the event; that is to say, it is a question about why natto is being eaten, as opposed to, say, why John is the one eating it. Thus, even if the follow-up tag is absent, we take the remnant to be focused.

  19. See, however, Horvath (2007), who argues against the position that the formal focus feature drives movement, based on the data in Hungarian.

  20. The fact that only why and how come are compatible with Stripping, is due to their ability to be base-generated in the highest Spec_CP and thus do not induce Relativized Minimality (RM) effects (Rizzi 1990). As why is not moved to the highest Spec_CP position, a focus element does not “intervene” between why and its trace. Other wh-phrases, on the other hand, undergo movement, and thus a focus-fronted element should induce RM effects. This prediction can be tested in non-ellipsis contexts using Neg-Inversion, which involves focus fronting (Culicover and Winkler 2008). The acceptability contrast in following examples suggests that this is indeed the case. The why example is much more acceptable compared to the non-why examples.

    1. (i)
      figure cb

    We are grateful to Marcel den Dikken for directing our attention to this important point. See Sect. 3.1.2 for related discussion on other languages.

  21. Note that D-linked wh-phrase can be followed by a focused phrase in some languages. We return to this point in Sect. 3.1.4.

  22. Rizzi (2001:294) shows that come mai ‘how come’ in Italian follows this same pattern, as expected under the current approach. In the subsequent discussion on Romance languages, we will concentrate on the patterns with why for the sake of exposition, putting aside the data of the Romance counterpart of how come.

  23. Stepanov and Tsai (2008) assume that focus operates via existential closure, unlike our proposal that focus is licensed via movement (see (101) below). They argue that Why-questions trigger different answers, (e.g. (79), (80)), because the focus operator is inside the scope of why as shown in (i), contrary to the position of other wh-phrases such as when in (ii) (e.g. (81), (82)).

    1. (i)
      figure cq
    1. (ii)
      figure cr

    Thus, their argument also reaches the same conclusion as ours: why in this type of example is base-generated in the CP domain.

  24. Rizzi as well as Bromberger note that when why is “construed” in an embedded clause, it moves as other wh-phrases do. Based on the island facts in (84), we argue against this position. (See footnote 34 for further discussion.)

  25. Rizzi points out that why does not trigger the Subject-Aux inversion in Italian (his data; see also Alboiu 2002; Suñer 1994 for Romanian and Spanish, respectively; see Uriagereka 1999 for Basque and Hungarian).

    1. (i)
      figure ct

    He takes this observation as further evidence in favor of the base-generation of why in IntP. While we accept Rizzi’s view to be essentially correct, there is crosslinguistic variation regarding Subject-Aux inversion in Why-interrogatives. Specifically, inversion is obligatory in this context in English. As an anonymous NLLT reviewer notes, Shlonsky and Soare (2012) argue that why is externally merged in the left-periphery and it undergoes short-distance movement to IntP. If correct, we could suggest that this short-distance movement of why triggers inversion in English, though for all other purposes its height (both in its external merge and the final landing site) is compatible with the observations concerning focus fronting and intervention effects caused by negation (and the locality facts to be discussed below). We leave this issue for future research.

  26. Rizzi notes that the incompatibility between wh-phrases other than why and focused phrases in Italian is a matrix phenomenon, whereas in an embedded clause, wh-phrases can co-occur with focused phrases; i.e., in an embedded context, there can be an ‘extra’ position for the focused phrase available as shown in (i).

    1. (i)
      figure cu

    In contrast, such a word order is not licensed in English as (ii) shows.

    1. (ii)
      figure cv

    Irrespective of the treatment that the data in (i) should receive, it is worth noting that the inverted word order in which the wh-element precedes the Focused XP as in Why-Stripping is judged as fairly deviant in Italian:

    1. (iii)
      figure cw
  27. This does not exclude the possibility that why is base-generated somewhere inside the matrix IP, while the focus-associated phrase is base-generated inside the embedded clause as in (96), as one of the anonymous NLLT reviewers points out. Our point, however, is that the focus association effect cannot be analyzed as an instance of base-generation of why and the focused phrase in the same clause followed by (long-distance) movement of why. Furthermore, we put forward the base-generation analysis of why based on the arguments in Rizzi (2001) and other works we cite here.

  28. We do not argue for the position that why in the non-focus construction is never base-generated. (Example (94) provides evidence for the base-generation of why in a context without focus association.) We merely argue that why in focus constructions (Why-Focus constructions and Why-Stripping) is base-generated in the higher Spec_CP. Unfortunately, at this point, we cannot tell when why in non-focus construction is base-generated in the higher Spec_CP.

  29. As is expected, wh-questions other than why-questions do not show differences in the scope interpretation regardless of whether a DP is focused, as the following examples show.

    1. (i)
      figure cy

    Both in (ia) and (ib), the adjunct wh-phrase where or when can take either the scope higher or lower than everyone, and thus, the pair-list answer is allowed in both cases.

  30. An anonymous NLLT reviewer points out that if a long-distance construed why undergoes movement, as Rizzi and Bromberger suggest, we expect the scope ambiguity between why and the matrix subject quantifiers in the following example.

    1. (i)
      figure cz

    However, 5 native speakers we interviewed (all are linguists) did not find the pair-list reading and they can only find the interpretation in which why takes wider scope than everyone. This judgment further suggests that why is base-generated in the high position even when it is long-distance construed.

  31. Unlike how come (Collins 1991), matrix why usually induces Subject-Aux Inversion (SAI). Nevertheless, the auxiliary in Why-Stripping does not escape the elided TP. This is compatible with Lasnik’s (2001) analysis where SAI does not occur under ellipsis (such as Sluicing, as shown in (i)), because the defective T, which usually causes SAI, is deleted.

    1. (i)
      figure db

    This analysis assumes that the necessity of SAI is calculated at PF, where deletion of TP occurs. On the other hand, if SAI happens in overt syntax rather than PF, as Hartmann (2011) claims, a different explanation may be needed. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this latter possibility.

  32. See discussion on the example (124) in Sect. 3.2 for the actual mechanism of how a bare V or P appears in the focus position via movement.

  33. In Sect. 3.2, we introduce how exactly V and P survive the ellipsis in relation to the discussion of the obligatory ellipsis requirement.

  34. Marcel den Dikken (p.c.) notes that the effect in (108) is not particularly strong possibly because there might be a tendency for speakers to interpret the stressed direct object as information focus as opposed to contrastive focus due to its final position. According to him, when this factor is controlled for, the effect is more salient:

    1. (i)
      figure di
  35. In such a special context, the focus association effect of why is not obligatory. Given that the non-focus-associated why does not have to be base-generated in [Spec_CP1] (as the low reading of why in (97a) indicates), the prediction should be that why with a focused element and no focus association could have a low reading under such a special context, in contrast to (98). We would like to see if this prediction holds.

  36. With regard to the interaction between syntax, focus, and phonetics within the standardly accepted T-model, we follow Irurtzun (2007)’s proposal that the F-Structure of a sentence is built up derivationally from the elements that are assigned a [+F] formal feature as they enter the numeration. Within this view, narrow syntax creates a well-specified F-Structure and the interface components can “read” it and apply some operations on it.

  37. We thank the anonymous NLLT reviewer who mentioned this point.

  38. Similarly, an anonymous reviewer gives the following contrast to show that a focused phrase associated with only cannot be elided.

    1. (i)
      figure dt

    On the other hand, Beaver and Clark (2008:180) report an example where a focused phrase associated with only is elided.

    1. (ii)
      figure du

    An example like (ii) suggests that it is not always the case that the focus-associated element cannot be elided. Note, importantly, that the non-ellipsis counterpart of (iiB) as in (iii), nutrapup may not receive focal stress.

    1. (iii)
      figure dv

    This suggests that when the focused element is repeated like in (iii), it may not receive focal stress. If this is the case, it is plausible to assume that the focus element that is elided in the ellipsis example in (ii) is a non-stressed focus element. As the element is not stressed, it does not need to escape from the ellipsis. This leads to the possibility that the driving force behind the movement of the focused phrase in Why-Stripping is phonetic effect of focus, i.e., the focal stress, rather than semantic focus.

  39. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that this type of example may be derived from the “deaccented” counterpart of the antecedent clause: ‘John ate NATTO, but I don’t understand why he ate natto/it.’

  40. This view is able to explain the existence of the why not construction (Merchant 2006), where not functions as a non-wh-remnant. Specifically, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, why can also be combined with polarity markers under clausal ellipsis.

    1. (i)
      figure dz

    According to Merchant (2006), in these structures why is a phrasal adverb and not, which is phrasal as well, adjoins to why. Note that why not also licenses Why-Stripping:

    1. (ii)
      figure ea

    This is expected as both why and not participate productively in ellipsis processes (e.g., see (1a) for a case of Stripping with not). Though a detailed study of the structure in (ii) goes beyond the goal of this paper, we hypothesize that this is a case of Why-Stripping with one additional operation, the adjunction of not to why.

  41. Building on this observation, Merchant suggests that Fragment Answers and Stripping have the same type of derivation. Still, Stainton (2006:138) shows that if Fragment Answers function as the answer for a sluiced wh-question, they can violate islands. In this context, Merchant (2010) points out that Stainton’s examples may have different derivation from the Fragment Answers that Merchant (2004) investigated. Despite this controversy, in this study we basically assume that Stripping and Fragment Answers have the same type of derivations and are subject to the same restrictions.

  42. Nakao (2009) points out several drawbacks of this line of analysis. For example, she argues that the assumption that only intermediate copies (but not the pronounced copy) get a * is unnatural, and claims that the difference in island sensitivity between Sluicing and Fragment Answers/Stripping comes from the timing of movement (i.e. Stripping causes island-violation in the PF component after spell-out, while the island-repair by ellipsis is calculated at the timing of Spell-out). However, because focus movement in Why-Stripping also only occurs in an ellipsis environment, its island-insensitivity would be unexpected under this approach without a further argument to dissociate Fragment Answers/Stripping and Why-Stripping.

  43. As an anonymous reviewer notes, there are a number of alternatives in the literature that derive the presence/absence of island sensitivity in a wide array of contexts from parallelism requirements on ellipsis, (Fox and Lasnik 2003; Griffiths and Lipták 2014, to appear; Park and Park 2011; Saab 2010). Such proposals may provide for an alternative treatment of the data at hand, where the postulation of two FPs would be unnecessary in English. We leave this line of analysis for future research.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor of NLLT for their detailed and helpful discussions. We are in debt to the following colleagues for their helpful discussion: Setsuko Arita, Peter Baumann, John Bowers, Sandy Chung, Brady Clerk, Michael Frazier, Tomohiro Fujii, Angel Gallego, Takuya Goro, Theresa Gregoire, John Hale, Ken Hiraiwa, Norbert Hornstein, Koji Hoshi, Kyle Johnson, Stefan Kaufmann, William Ladusaw, Howard Lasnik, Jeffrey Lidz, Jim McCloskey, Jason Merchant, Maria Polinsky, David Potter, Henk van Riemsdjik, Elizabeth Smith, Luis Vicente, Matt Wagers, Gregory Ward, Andrew Weir, and Akira Watanabe. Thanks also to the audience of GLOW 35 and WCCFL 30. This work has been supported in part by NSF grant BCS-1323245 awarded to Masaya Yoshida. All the remaining errors are, of course, our own.

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Yoshida, M., Nakao, C. & Ortega-Santos, I. The syntax of Why-Stripping. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 33, 323–370 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9253-9

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